Nicnivin
by henchgirl
Summary: Be careful what you wish for. Dean tangles with a faery queen. Then he tangles with his family.
1. Chapter 1

_(preseries. no ownage, no money made, no insult intended. enjoy.)_

-

Her name is Nicnivin.

She is beautiful. Dark and lush like an over-ripe plum, black tangles twisting down her back, slanting storm gray eyes all too knowing. Yes, she is very beautiful, but there is something slightly wrong with that beauty, something sinister and wicked, and her skin is like jasmine petals in the moonlight, flickering and shimmering pale as bone, and sometimes he thinks her nails are claws.

Her name is Nicnivin, but knowing that hasn't helped Dean at all.

"Such a pretty boy," she whispers, running long fingers lightly over his face, soft and dry like the wings of moths. Dean isn't sure he'd move away from that touch even if he could. Which he can't. Drowsy and dreamy and dazed and disjointed and distracted and disconnected and probably a dozen other things starting with dis, and yeah, that's alliteration and wouldn't Sammy be surprised to find out Dean knows what that is? Damn dust. Bobby warned him about it. _Watch out for the faery-dust, Dean! Don't inhale any of it! _

Yeah, well. Hell of a lot easier said than done, wasn't it?

The clearing is dim, only a few moonbeams managing to fight their way down through the wild branches, and it's sheltered enough that he doesn't much mind laying shirtless on the damp moss, even though it's only early may and still chilly after sunset. His head is in her lap, and she looks down at him covetously, like he used to eye the Impala before Dad let him drive her.

All around them her court weave in and out of the trees.

He doesn't actually know what usually happens when someone is taken by the faeries. The ones who come back tend to be...not all there, and their memories evaporate like ether, which Dean now has decided must be due to dust overdose. The ones who don't come back...who knows?

He has an advantage over her usual prey. He thought he had two, but knowing her name turned out to be a bust. She just smiled, and told him she was flattered he'd heard of her. What he _does _have is the knowledge of what she is, and because he knows that, he also knows not to eat her food, or drink her wine, or give his consent in even the vaguest of ways, and so he does nothing, just waits and watches with blurry eyes. Dad and Sammy will come for him. They will.

If they manage to get their heads out of their asses and stop yelling at each other for five minutes.

"Don't you want to ride with me, Dean?"

And that's the problem, isn't it? Part of him does want to.

It's because of the dust, he tells himself. Because he's drugged up to his eyeballs and she's glamouring him for all she's worth, it's what they _do. _But the part of him that's tired of picking up other people's slack and cleaning other people's messes; the part that's sick to death of being stuck in the middle, unable to please anyone, least of all himself no matter what he does; the part that hates being taken for granted all the damned time; the part that gets hurt, over and over and over and over – to that part, oblivion in faeryland sounds pretty damn good, no matter how much he tries to ignore it.

"They don't care," she tells him, voice low and intimate, hypnotic. "They don't care that they hurt you, Dean. Not enough to stop. They use you. They will keep using you until they don't need you anymore, and then they will leave you. You know this."

And he does, has thought it many times and buried those thoughts in the deepest, darkest corner of his mind, and it's not fair that she can get into his head so easily and use them against him.

She's not supposed to drop the subtle faery trickery and ambush him with truth, because how can he defend against that?

"Forget them, Dean," she says. "Ride with me."

"No," he says, but it comes out as 'Nuh', because his lips are numb and uncooperative, and he's not sure that he means it. Why does she want him so badly anyway? Must be plenty of more pliable mortals out there for her to play with.

She laughs, like tinkling crystal and pearls spilling down a staircase. "Oh, Dean...of course there is. But you _glow_. For those of us who can see it, those of us clever enough to appreciate it, it's irresistible."

He wishes she'd stop listening to what he's thinking.

"Don' glow," he says, very reasonably. "Tha's you an' your posse. Like...damn rave party, you lot."

She looks perplexed for a second, then smiles at him patiently as if he is a small and not particularly bright child. "That's a different kind of glow altogether. Dean...they're never satisfied, are they? You fight for them and you sacrifice for them and you give and you give, and it's never ever enough, is it?" She traces his lips with those moth-wing fingers, and he shivers. "Ride with me, Dean. I'll show you things beyond your wildest dreams. I'll make you my Master of the Hunt. I can give you anything you want, Dean. Anything."

"No," Dean whispers, and he's talking way too much now, rambling, dangerous and stupid, but he can't stop himself and it's not fucking fair... _Loose lips sink ships. _"You can't. You can't give me them." He swallows hard. "You can't make them stop fighting. You can't-"

She smiles, then, a strange and unsettling smile. "Maybe I can, Dean. Maybe even that. If they love you enough, I can. But I won't do it for free."

Faeries lie. They trick you and confuse you and laugh behind your back, and everything they say has at least two meanings. They can turn you upside down and inside out, and if they make your wishes come true, it's rarely in the way you'd thought it would be. _Careful what you wish for. _Yet...

"No," he repeats, but his tongue tripped over yes in the fog in his head.

"I can wait," she says. "For a glow like yours, I can wait. What is time to me, after all? Give me your word, Dean, tell me yes, and I'll do everything in my power to give you what you want."

"And then what?" he asks, and he's sleepy and dizzy and he just wants to be left the hell _alone_ too tired to play the mind games of a faery queen, too tired for the blame-game Dad and Sam will play when _(if) _they find him, too tired for any fucking games at all.

"And then? You know what I want, Dean."

_ "Dean!" _

Was that...?

_"Let go of him, you bitch!" _

Oh. It was. The cavalry's here.

Shotgun blasts scatter her court to the four winds, but Nicnivin looks only a little bit annoyed, even when a round of consecrated iron pellets tear through the air dangerously close to her head. She's still talking to him, low and coaxing, and Sammy's shouting and Dad's barking orders and he can't make sense of any of it, it's _too much_ and he wants them all to just shut the fuck up!

And then, through the blur comes a single clear sentence, inserting itself into his mind without passing through his ears.

'Do you want them to stop fighting, Dean?'

"Yes!" he says, the word out of his mouth before he can even think. Her eyes flash in wild triumph, and damn her faery trickery!

"Done!" she laughs gleefully and bends her graceful neck to place a kiss over his heart. "As in mind, so in body," Nicnivin says against his skin. There's a flash of almost-pain and his head is swimming, vision going gray at the edges. When he can see again she is gone, and Sammy's dropping his shotgun and falling to his knees beside him, all worried frown and hovering hands.

"Dean? Dean! Hey, man, you okay?"

_ No. _ He blinks slowly. His body feels very far away, but the taste of plums is strong in his mouth and there's sweet jasmine on the breeze.

"Come on, Dean, say something!" Sammy pleads, shaking him.

"Sam," he breathes, just to get the shaking to stop, because it's making him sick and he doesn't think he has the muscle control to roll over. Choking to death on his own puke has never been a dream of his.

Two worn and dirty hiking boots stop right by his head, and from this angle his father looks as tall as the trees, the mighty warrior with his eyes in the distance.

"He hurt?"

"There's no blood," Sam says, concerned, "but he's completely out of it. Dad-"

"Yeah. Let's get him out of here, see what we can do. Grab the gear, Sam."

"Dad-"

"_Now, _ Samuel," Dad cuts him off, grabbing Dean's arm and hoisting him over his shoulder in a fireman's carry. Sam glowers, and Dean tenses, waiting for the inevitable round of bitching, but to his amazement Sammy lets it go. _Nicnivin? _

Her laughter twines seductively around his sluggish thoughts, fades only when he finally sleeps, tucked safely into the back seat of the Impala.

_-_

_ to be continued. _


	2. Chapter 2

_(long time no see. hello again. i claim no ownership to the winchester boys, and no insult is intended. enjoy.)_

_-  
_

Dean comes back to himself slowly, like trudging through the sand of desert dunes – a wearying little slide back for every step forward.

His head is throbbing, worse than any hangover he's ever had, and his left arm is numb from being crushed under the weight of his body for too long. _Recovery position,_ his sluggish brain informs him, and then continues taking stock. He's freezing, bone-deep cold, the sort you get when your sleep has been deep enough to be labeled unconsciousness, and the thin scratchy blanket is doing nothing at all to fend it off.

He shivers, curls in on himself even more. Wishes immediately that he hadn't as waves of nausea crash over him and he _hates_ being sick, hates the green-tinged helplessness of it, hates the supporting hands that feel like branding irons on his clammy back.

When he's finally done, he collapses back onto the flat pillows, panting and shaking. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he's amazed and grateful that he managed to keep it off the bed, even if laying in his own filth seems like a minor issue compared to everything else. Slowly, trying to keep his breaths as even as he can, he carefully untangles his thoughts from the reddish-black mess of pain and nausea and confusion.

After a while the hands are back, pressing the mouth of a plastic bottle insistently against his lips. Dean turns his head, not even willing to _think_ about swallowing anything at the moment. The bottle follows him, spilling shockingly cold water over his chin and soaking his t-shirt, and if his body didn't feel like just so much dead weight he'd move away but the most he can accomplish is to shiver and blink his blurry eyes open to identify his tormentor. _Sammy_..._Dude, what the fuck?_

"Dean," Sammy breathes, and his face unscrunches a bit from its perpetual frown. Dean is relieved. Lately, Sam's frown has made him consider the idea that maybe the if-the-wind-turns-your-face-will-stay-like-that myth isn't really a myth, and he doesn't like to think of eternity with the bitchface because it's really _not helping anything._ Then the bottle returns, and he splutters and coughs and chokes and _god_ why won't they just leave him alone?

"Sam, what the hell? Are you trying to drown him?" Dad demands, and that's kind of what Dean's wondering too but he doesn't see any reason to shout about it, especially not since the shouting sends renewed bursts of pain through his aching head. "Leave him be. He needs to sleep it off."

"He's going to get dehydrated, Dad!" Sam says in his obnoxious _are-you-really-that-STUPID-_voice, and Dean doesn't have to look to know the bitchface is back in full force. "Dehydration is the-"

"You watch your tone, Samuel." Dad sounds tired and worried behind the warning growl, but Sammy never hears that, and Dad never hears when Sammy's petulance is just a thin cover for fear. Dean does, though, he hears every nuance, every inflection, he knows exactly where this is headed and he's in no shape to deal with it, and it _hurts_ that they can't even wait until he's feeling okay before they start tearing into eachother.

It hurts, god, _everything_ hurts, and he would laugh if he could at the fact that he'd almost believed a faery promise. _I can make them stop fighting,_ she said. Yeah right.

-

The next time Dean wakes up he's got music in his head. Not Zeppelin or Mötley Crüe, but something weirdly dissonant and piercingly sweet, at the same time familiar and alien. He catches stray words and bits of phrases, oddly accented and compelling, giving him bright glimpses of laughing and hunting through the blue of night-time forests, a pack of white dogs running with him, their red eyes following him with absolute devotion. _In secreit place, this hindir nicht...I hard ane beirne say till ane bricht...my huny, my hart, my heill..._

Later, when he's driving in Dad's tracks down a rain-slick country road, he turns up the volume on the stereo as loud as he can stand it, trying to drown out noise with noise. Sam glares and moves to lower it again, but Dean stops him with a glare of his own.

"D'ya wanna ride with Dad then, Sammy?" he asks, eyebrow raised.

Sam's mouth twists like he's bitten into a lemon and then realized he's out of tequila. "You're a fucking asshole, Dean."

"I'll just take that as a no. Then _shotgun_ shuts his _cakehole._"

_...ye brek my hart, my bony ane..._

-

Sam and Dad are not talking. they're using guerilla tactics, going at each other by going at him. Again. Dean's got a vicious headache that just won't quit, again, and when he sleeps he dreams of white dogs and cool spring water, and her singing as she bandages the stab wounds in his back.

-

It gets worse. Anybody surprised? Not Dean, that's for sure, Winchester luck being what it is. And he should probably say something, tell Dad, because it sure as hell isn't natural, the music and this strange liquid pain that has no apparent physical cause, that is impervious to painkillers and only ever truly stops when he's alone or his family is asleep. He should say something, but he doesn't. Doesn't want Dad to curse his disappointment of a son and then tell him to suck it up like a good little soldier, doesn't want Sam to find any new reasons to cut him to pieces with that oh-so-clever tongue. _Falling for faery tricks...oh, come _on_, Dean, not even you can be that moronic._

No, he really doesn't want to hear that.

Pain, he can deal with. It's not like he hasn't done it before.

-

To the white dogs in his dreams, he is the center of the universe. They would follow him anywhere, he knows that with startling certainty; they are hunters and he is their master, they move to obey even the slightest of his whims. Their eyes are red like his blood on the bandages the faery queen keeps changing, but they are not evil. They are just wild, like thunder is wild, and when they look at him with those blood-red eyes he feels calm and sure like a well-oiled gun.

-

The house of cards starts falling faster than Dean can fix it after a hunt in Wyoming.

It's not even a hunt gone bad – no blood, no broken bones, no concussion, simple haunting, salt and burn and bye, bye Mary Lou – just a hunt that gets in the way of Sam's _normal_. A missed history test, and an essay due for English, and Sam completely loses it when they're back at the motel. Drags out all the old favourites (Dad-you're-an-obsessive-bastard, Mom-is-dead, This-is-not-a-life) and expands on them, yelling things so full of venom that by rights Dad should be dropping dead instead of shouting right back.

The only one who drops is Dean.

Vision greying out at the edges, just like when Nicnivin sealed her trickery, every accusation is a red-hot knife to his back. Falling gracelessly to his knees he chokes on copper flavour, coughs and catches splatters of red in disbelieving hands. And still they don't stop, too busy fighting to notice. Not until he's flat on the floor, panicking, covered in blood with every breath a struggle. Not until then do they finally shut up, and as they move as one to check him for injuries that his mind knows cannot be real, he wishes he didn't have to bleed to make himself visible.

_I can make them stop fighting. If they love you enough._

-

_To be continued._


	3. Chapter 3

_(once more into the breach and all that. still no ownage and no money made. enjoy.)_

_-_

The light in the hospital is wrong.

It's not that it's too bright, for once. It doesn't burn when Dean opens his eyes to  
reassure his little brother, who really does look little in this moment, small and  
scared. Dean remembers a time when Sam thought he could fix anything. Back then,  
Dean almost believed it too, just because Sammy was _so sure_. And he still  
tries, he really does, but it's never enough. Not anymore.

He can hear Dad outside in the corridor, taking his frustrations out on the nursing  
staff. At least _they're_ getting paid for it, Dean thinks uncharitably,  
glaring as best he can at the sterile white light, and yeah, he's on the good stuff  
now alright, slow and merciless like desert heat and desert haze. He'd pull the IV  
if he thought he could get away with it, to stop the shifting of sands that bring  
unwanted things to the surface. Bones and relics and ashes. Thoughts that should not  
be thought, thoughts he can't _let_ himself think, because he has  
responsibility, and he has a damn _duty_, and so what if love hasn't given him  
much of anything lately? It is what it is.

The moon is waning gibbous tonight. The light should be blue.

He desperately wants it to be blue.

-

After the fight, or rather, during the armistice, there's just snatches of memory.  
He lines them up, again and again, because far too much of his life has been lost in  
a blur lately and he's sick and tired of it.

First: pain and panic and endless coughing, bitter-slick blood getting  
_everywhere_, so much blood and he would have worried more about that if he'd,  
you know, been able to _breathe_ properly, but it's a moot point because he  
can't, and Dad and Sam are still taking potshots at each other with him in the  
middle. What's new, hey?

Second: being carried to the Impala, and he can see even with eyes that barely stay  
open that she wants to go-go-go, hungry for the road, and he thinks _sorry baby,  
i'm going to ruin your upholstery_, then winces when Sam yanks her door open with  
unnecessary violence. _Don't take it out on her, Sammy...she never did anything to  
you._ Then a gust of wind and a ghost of jasmine, and it's wickedly sweet like  
nothing else in the world.

Third: loud voices, insistent, talking at him and above him and through him, and  
he's too tired to figure it out. Sharp burn of morphine in his veins, and he watches  
with vague interest as they force a plastic tube into the side of his chest. It  
should probably hurt, but all he feels is pressure.

And then he dreams, and the white dogs are there to meet him.

-

The doctors are perplexed, and they're not enjoying it. He is a bug under a  
microscope and they don't like him, because they don't like things they can't  
explain. Oh, they can put words to what happened. Neat little labels for their  
filing cabinets, hemopneumothorax being their favourite one, but even though (as the  
most pompous of the lot is overly fond of informing them, over and over)  
pneumothoraces sometimes do occur spontaneously, hemopneumothoraces do not.

Blood doesn't just decide one day that _hey! Wouldn't it be fun to collapse a lung  
from the outside?_ And then it certainly doesn't decide that appearing out of  
nowhere to fill that lung from the inside is an even greater idea. The doctors are  
affronted by the fact that according to all their tests, Dean's blood did.

"He should have multiple stab wounds to match these symptoms!" one of them says when  
they think Dean is sleeping. He almost laughs. Almost.

It's not his fault that the doctors can't see them.

_-_

_Love me broughte and love me wroughte, man, to be thy fere..._

Dad and Sam don't see the wounds they left either, but then they're _good_ at  
not seeing things they don't want to see. What they do see is Dean almost dying of  
inexplicable causes, and they both take that as some kind of personal insult. It's  
the first thing they've agreed on in a long time, and Dean would applaud and  
everything, but the music in his head has changed once again and it's all he can do  
to keep up.

_...love me fedde and love me ledde, love me lette here..._

It's so wickedly clever, isn't it, this little faery game. He hurts because he  
loves. If they love him, they can make it stop. If they love him _enough_. He'd  
like to say of course they do, but he thinks maybe it got lost somewhere along the  
way, in the cracks between then and now, between son and soldier. Lost in the  
knowledge that he'll always be there to pick up the slack and clean up the mess,  
taking their punches and rolling with them, and he doesn't know if he's the most or  
least selfish Winchester for letting it be that way. It's too late to change any of  
it now; he'll make do, he'll _deal_, just like he's always done. Maybe it's  
not a winning strategy, but he's still alive, isn't he? _If they love you enough._

_...love me slou, and love me drou - love me layde on bere..._

_-_

Of course it's stupid, he knows that. Not telling Dad is probably the most stupid  
thing he's ever done. Just stupid, stubborn pride, but sometimes it feels like  
that's the only thing he has, and if they don't notice that he's hurting beyond the  
immediate and physical, that _they're_ the ones hurting him, he's damn well not  
going to enlighten them.  
So, death by pride, then, and curiosity - sick, morbid curiosity - testing the shaky  
foundations of his world, wanting, _needing_, proof that they are real. _Do  
you love me? Do you need me? Do you _see _me?_

If he tells them, then he'll never know for sure.

Pain, curiosity, and maybe some cowardice. He's not immune to pain, though he likes  
to pretend he is, and the pain will be the same, manifesting or not, and dying  
quickly on the outside seems a lot less painful than dying slowly on the inside.

-

Dad orders them into the car and takes off for Bobby's before the neat round hole  
under the sterile wrapping has even had time to scab over properly. Dean is beyond  
exhausted, so tired that he stopped even _attempting_ to respond to Dad's gruff  
questioning hours ago, and the tense silence between the two in the front seat is  
just a faint buzzing annoyance in the back of his head. Nicnivin is singing to him,  
humming sweet as the milk and cookies from before he knew anything at all about  
pain.

The night is unimaginably huge when viewed from the inside of the Impala. Endless.  
He knows it used to scare him, all that darkness for the wicked things to hide in,  
and he like Sisyphus, doomed to labour that will never be finished. It used to scare  
him, the thought that he could fight and fight forever and it wouldn't make any  
difference, three new hunts popping up for every finished salt-and-burn. It doesn't  
scare him anymore. He's not sure when it stopped.

Now, he gazes up into the faintness of the stars, and all he feels is the promise of  
freedom.

-

Sammy has always been the only Winchester Rumsfeld really likes, despite Dean's many  
attempts at bribery with jerky and hamburgers. But this time, when they tumble out  
into Bobby's dusty yard, the dog runs straight for Dean, without so much as a second  
look in Sam's direction.

That's odd, but not as odd as the fact that when he reaches Dean, he flops over onto  
his back and begs to have his belly scratched. That is _beyond_ odd, because  
Rumsfeld takes his duties as guardian of Singer's Salvage _very_ seriously, and  
is not in the habit of rolling over for anybody _ever_, not even for Bobby.

Rumsfeld isn't white, and his eyes aren't red. But the expression in those ordinary  
brown eyes is exactly the same.

Under Dean's hand, the dog's heart beats a perfect counterpoint to his own.

-

Rumsfeld doesn't leave Dean's side.

Bobby watches them thoughtfully throughout the day; steady eyes following them as he  
hands out drinks laced with holy water, as they sit down to white beans and sausages  
for dinner, as he listens to Dad's increasingly wild speculations on what's wrong  
and Sam's equally wild attempts to shoot them down just for the hell of it; he  
watches and rubs his neck below the trucker cap.

"What'd you do to my dog, boy?" he demands, masterfully cutting off Dad's ranting  
just before Sam's insolent eyerolls in response to it can set off a major explosion.

Dean looks down to where Rumsfeld's head is resting on his knee, and shrugs.  
"Nothing, sir."

Bobby grunts, accepting the answer but not necessarily believing it. Dean probably  
wouldn't either, so that's okay.

-

Over the next week and a half, Bobby uncharacteristically ignores the demolition of  
his carefully disorganized piles of books and grimoires, the petty squabbling and  
the arguments and the gradual draining of his best whiskey, in favour of watching  
Dean.

Dean's not used to being watched - wait, scratch that. He is watched _all the  
time_: women watch him covetously, men watch him assessingly, cops and other  
authority figures watch him for signs of trouble. He's used to being watched. He's  
just not used to being _seen_.

Not the way Bobby is seeing him now - catching every little flinch and wince, every  
pounding headache, every time he can't stop shaking and has to bury his hands in  
Rumsfeld's fur to hide it.

Bobby sees, and he connects the dots, because he's not stupid and he knows Dean and  
Dean's never been able to bullshit him. _I'm on to you, boy._

Dean is honestly not sure if he's relieved or disappointed.

-

_to be continued._


	4. Chapter 4

_(well. what do you know. final chapter. amazing, huh? i still don't own supernatural, and i still don't intend any offense, and i still hope you enjoy it.)_

_-_

Dean hides in sleep.

After all, his cover's been blown. Contrary to popular belief, he does know when a cause is lost. Coughing up gallons of blood was irrefutable proof that he is not okay, and there is no use pretending that things aren't far beyond fucked up when everybody knows perfectly well that they are. Even if so far he's the only one to know the real reason why.

_Stupid. Stupidstupidstupid._ The word echoes mockingly in his head, but it's not his voice. It's not Nicnivin's voice, either. It's Sam's voice, and Dad's, and he's not going to listen. He chose this road, chose something for himself alone for maybe the first time in his life, and he is just as stubborn as any other Winchester. He wants, no, he _needs _to know for sure where he stands. So while he waits for the answer, sleep is his escape, just like silence was when the hunt was new. When _he_ was new. Still shiny and pure under the thin layer of soot.

He's not anything close to shiny now, and he takes his comforts where he can. So he sleeps.

It hurts that Sam and Dad do exactly what he wants and let him get away with that. They even make attempts at keeping their voices down when they fight. Hissing like angry rattlers. It's hardly an improvement. Burning sting of disappointment. So very familiar by now.

But nothing hurts when he sleeps.

In the dreams, with his white dogs, there is no pain and no doubt and no hesitation, just clear, exhilarating purpose. He is at the same time calm and confident and wildly, dangerously elated, and his voice, bronze and immense like some ancient great bell, casts his resounding challenge to the sky.

_Go-go-go._

-

"Dean. _Dean!_"

Bobby's hand on his shoulder, firm and determined, pulls him away from his gossamer sanctuary. The dogs whine pitifully, desperately, like it physically hurts them when he leaves. There's no mistaking that sound – he's made it often enough himself, swallowed it down and bitten it back, choked on it until he made himself sick – and to hear it voiced now _because of_ him? Even if it's just the damn dogs, stupid dogs that aren't even really real, fucking faery dogs that see him and listen to him and _love_ him when they have no reason to and _goddamnit_ it's all so fucking fucked up.

"This has gone on damn well long enough," Bobby informs him, and yeah, Dean agrees wholeheartedly. It has. And he loves Bobby, he really does, but in this moment he hates him in equal measure. Because Bobby's not Dad, and yet he's sitting here doing what Dad should be doing_. If he loves you enough._ Dad's one of the best there is at pattern recognition, everybody says so, so why, why, why doesn't he see this? Why doesn't he see _Dean?_

Dean picks at the faded green blanket, tugs it closer around himself with hands that seem paler than they should be, alien, blue veins drawn on in permanent marker. He's cold, like he always is these days, cold and so very tired, and he really doesn't want to do this. Not now. Not ever. _No chick-flick moments._ But since when have his wants ever been taken into account? Taking a deep breath, he focuses on Rumsfeld's comforting weight on his feet, Rumsfeld who, if Dean doesn't look straight at him, is flickering white in the half-light.

"Dean. Snap out of it. Talk to me." It's as close to pleading as Dean's ever heard out of Bobby's mouth, and it makes something inside him curl up in shame. Bobby deserves better. Shouldn't have to deal with Winchester crap. "I just want to help you, you know that."

Dean does know, and he's an ungrateful little brat. "Bobby...I don't...I can't...please." _Please don't make me tell you how much I've fucked up. Please don't make me._

"Stop being a damn idiot, boy!"

Dean flinches, but it's not because of Bobby. Downstairs, something crashes to the floor. It's muffled, but there's no mistaking the rumbling grizzly growl of Dad in a mood, or the obnoxious magpie triumph of Sam, not satisfied until he shoves his sharp beak straight into a nerve.

And this time the mounting pain feels nothing like being stabbed. It's unhurried, burning merciless like the sun, and it says _hello again, Dean. Let's play._

It likes him. It really, _really_ likes him. His body tenses under the suddenly crushing weight of the blanket, jaw clenching, knuckles turning breathlessly pale, nothing but bone and sinew, no, no, no...

"Just...what...what are you _thinking_, Dean? Why are you-" Bobby rubs the back of his neck in agitation, his voice almost breaking on the last word. Dean hates to see it. He never ever meant to upset Bobby. "You're killing yourself!"

"She said..." He swallows thickly, hoping the saliva will drown the whimper that's clawing its way up his throat. "-she said it'd make them stop fighting." And _god, _how pathetic can he get?

"She? She _who,_ Dean?"

"Our most gracious Queen of the Blackberry Patch," Dean whispers, and Rumsfeld is most definitely white now, and downstairs the voices are getting louder, louder, louder until...

"_I hate this life! I hate you! I wish you'd died with Mom in the fire!"_

Dean screams.

-

The darkness had been deep enough that not even the dogs could follow him down, and when he wakes from it the world is dead.

It's night (still? again?) but it's just black. Dusty and dry and lifeless. There are stars, but they're just burning balls of gas, aeons away from him. They don't sing to him any more. He is an island. Removed.

There is no pain. There's nothing else, either.

They expect him to be grateful.

They've saved him, haven't they? They love him _so much_, and they've saved him and he should be grateful.

It's Scandinavian magic, the thing chained around his neck. Cold iron forged into a rough broken circle, the ends crossing and curling into tight spirals. Lovingly crafted on three Thursday evenings from nine kinds of iron, blessed at Mass on the three Sundays following, it's powerful magic to ward off the fae.

Fae cross. _Ellekors._

Dean loathes it.

The darkness had been deep enough that not even the dogs could follow him down, and when he woke from it they were gone and the world was dead.

-

Rumsfeld follows the car when they leave, runs recklessly along the dirt road in the cloud of dust that marks their passing. All the way down to the interstate he follows them, and Dean watches him get smaller and smaller until he can't see him anymore.

-

Since he is _saved _now_,_ since he doesn't shake or burn or bleed at their words anymore, since he stopped being a liability, Dad and Sam have gone back to the tried and true: don't ask, don't tell. Physical pain has always trumped mental in the past, so why should it be any different now?

He'd thought that maybe, maybe now that they've seen in red and white what they do to him, maybe they'd change. Try to get along. For his sake.

Yeah. And the demon will walk up to them one day and apologize.

_If wishes were fishes we'd all lay nets. If they love you enough._

And if they don't?

-

"God damn it, Dean, I'm doing it for you!"

Sam is packing. Neat even in his anger, he jerkily folds t-shirts and underwear, shoving them into the duffel bag. Efficient, Sammy is. Better be. He's stuffing his entire life in there. His entire life except Dean.

Sam is leaving.

Dean is just cold.

"You better run that by me again, Sammy." he says, in a voice that doesn't sound like his own. Cold and dry and empty. "Because I could swear you just said you're walking out on us for my sake."

"Yes! You almost _died_, Dean! Because of me and Dad. This is the best I can do for you, don't you see that?"

No. No, he really doesn't. What he sees is that Sam wants an easy out, a guilt-free escape to his precious apple-pie life. He's not getting one. Not this time.

"I'm not stupid, Sam. You wanna leave, fine. But don't try to dress it up as some kind of selfless sacrifice, because it damn well isn't."

Silence. The insult of the door sliding closed with a soft _snick, _instead of slamming shut hard enough to rattle the windows. And then Sam is gone.

Just like that.

-

Something is better than nothing.

Hunt after hunt after hunt, and it feels like forever since Dean applied the word _family _to his Dad and himself_ – _but at least they're mostly on the same side. Saving people, hunting things. Dean doesn't talk, but then neither does John _(Dad),_ except to bark orders.

John seems determined to singlehandedly rid the United States of everything supernatural, and more and more he sends Dean off alone, to cover more ground.

It's far from okay. But he'll deal. It's what he _does,_ right?

Something is better than nothing.

Until the day when he comes back from a solo hunt in New Orleans to find their motel room neatly cleaned and terrifyingly empty.

-

_And if they don't...if they don't-_

There's mist coming off the river, swathing the dreaming trees in milky layers of gauze. It winds around Dean's legs like a curious cat, watching expectantly, waiting.

_Running water neutralizes magic._

A deep breath, and then he yanks off the chain that holds the _ellekors,_ the chain that binds him to a world that is colourless and dead, all in the name of saving him. There's nobody left to save him _for,_ now, and he throws the amulet into the water with vicious satisfaction.

"Nicnivin!" He shouts her name at the top of his lungs, and it sounds like it did in his dreams, the bronze bell, the silver horn, clear and true and unafraid. "_Nicnivin!"_

The moon is blue.

-

_finis._


End file.
